By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and David Ingram
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A decision by a Florida jury to impose punitive damages of $23.6 billion against RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company on Friday is likely to be rejected on appeal or the award reduced substantially, lawyers with expertise in jury awards said on Sunday.
The award, which the cigarette maker has said it will contest, likely falls outside the boundaries for punitive damages that the U.S. Supreme Court has laid down in a series of cases, the lawyers told Reuters.
RJ Reynolds is a unit of Reynolds American , which last week announced it would acquire rival Lorillard Inc in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $27.4 billion, including net debt.
A Florida state court jury decided the award in a case brought by Cynthia Robinson of Pensacola. She is the widow of a chain smoker, Michael Johnson, who died of lung cancer in 1996 at 36.
After a four-week trial and 11 hours of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict granting compensatory damages of $7.3 million to the widow and the couple's child, as well as $9.6 million to Johnson's son from a previous relationship.
The same jury deliberated for another seven hours before awarding Robinson the additional sum of $23.6 billion in punitive damages, according to the verdict forms.
"Nobody thinks the $23 billion is going to remain," said Richard Daynard, a law professor at Northeastern University and the chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project.
Because of constitutional guarantees of due process, the Supreme Court has shown a reluctance to allow punitive damages that are far out of line with compensatory damages in the same case, he said. The court's general guideline is that the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages should be below 10:1.

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Workmen set up a huge inflatable Winston cigarette pack in the infield at the Daytona International …
The court precedent, though, still leaves room for a punitive award of more than $150 million, Daynard said.
Punitive damages are meant to discourage companies or people from bad conduct, while compensatory damages are intended to pay victims for their actual losses.
"There were all these concerns about runaway awards with regard to punitive damages," said Neil Vidmar, professor of law at Duke University. "Some are saying that nine times (the compensatory damages) is the absolute limit, but actually many times, the courts have cut that down to one or two times."
In 2008, the high court cut a $2.5 billion punitive damages award against Exxon Mobil Corp for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska to about $500 million, saying the ratio in that case should be 1:1 with compensatory damages.
But there is "no mathematical bright line rule," said Professor Catherine Sharkey, a tort law expert at New York University School of Law.
Robinson sued R.J. Reynolds in 2008 over the death of her husband, Michael, claiming the company conspired to conceal the health dangers and addictive nature of its products. Johnson, a hotel shuttle bus driver, smoked one to three packs a day for more 20 years, starting at age 13.
Robinson's lawsuit originally was part of large class-action litigation known as the "Engle case," filed in 1994 against tobacco companies.
A jury in that case issued a verdict in 2000 in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding $145 billion in punitive damages, which at the time was the largest such judgment in U.S. history.
That award, however, was rejected in 2006 by the Florida Supreme Court, which decertified the class. It agreed with a lower court that the group was too disparate and that each consumer had smoked for different reasons.
But the court said the plaintiffs could file lawsuits individually. Robinson was one of them.
"I worked with juries for several decades, and I cannot put my mind on what they are doing, but the Florida jury (in awarding a huge sum) seems to be sending a message," said Duke's Vidmar. "This is a statement from the jury that this was an outrageous behavior by the tobacco companies."
RJ Reynolds has paid about $114 million for 15 Engle-related cases that have been finalized, the company said in an April regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Another $180 million in damages are on appeal.
Northeastern's Daynard noted that the $23 billion is close to the cost of the Reynolds-Lorillard merger deal, adding that Wall Street should be aware of the potential for more huge damage awards.
"You're going to have a lot more cases where juries could find themselves similarly outraged," he said. "The reluctance of the tobacco companies to settle these cases, thinking they can handle the cases as a matter of course, may be a mistake."
The two cigarette makers face thousands of suits, but the impact has not been as dramatic as was expected a decade ago, and trials have given investors an idea of what the companies will pay.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and David Ingram; Editing by Dan Grebler)

- Hey Mister!! Butt out of my private dispute on this public bulletin board!!!

Nope. This is fun retaliation.

Quote:

If you had an iota of sense, you'd see that ping replied to ME, in a particularly ineffectual manner no less.

When you pay attention to the same thing, I'll take that into consideration.
If you had an iota of sense, you'd note it may not be that the person did it just immediately prior in the same thread, but earlier and elsewhere or just has a history of it even. Poster do have histories with each other where something started a long time ago and keeps going.

You are one nutty broad. I have no doubt you've made a an Andrew 'Dice' type comedian somewhere very rich.

You're just not fair in balanced, but rely on selective outrage, when you don your Justice League cape. You're pretty easy to see through including your projecting your own kind of nuttiness. Letting others off the hook when they've done their fair share of the same thing is pretty nutty.

At this point, Eugenio Vélez fears for his record number of at bats without a hit.

Have you even ASPIRED to post anything of substantive value? Even once in your life thought 'surely I don't want the entire world to view me as a total shitheel. Maybe I could life just ONE finger.'

I'm not talking about follow through, baby steps here. Just have you even had the notion of being a member of society?

This is at least the second time you've played the "Everyone in the world hates you!" card. It's the cry of the truly pathetic and beaten, and also very cliché for someone known as an over-the-top drama queen.

This is at least the second time you've played the "Everyone in the world hates you!" card. It's the cry of the truly pathetic and beaten, and also very cliché for someone known as an over-the-top drama queen.

I'd mention the ignore function to you, but it appears that if it weren't for your ability to follow me around to post anywhere and everywhere the always informative and never repetitive 'Oh, here's Baby Lee on CP again, I for myself do not like this guy,' you'd have no reason to exist here at all.

The question stands though, have you so much as contemplated in passing posting something of value or substance? . . . just once to see how it feels?

__________________
Horses must love being the go-to animal when discussing whether a man has a HUGE COCK!

I'd mention the ignore function to you, but it appears that if it weren't for your ability to follow me around to post anywhere and everywhere the always informative and never repetitive 'Oh, here's Baby Lee on CP again, I for myself do not like this guy,' you'd have no reason to exist here at all.

The question stands though, have you so much as contemplated in passing posting something of value or substance? . . . just once to see how it feels?

Yes, I "follow you around"...You aware how this site works, right?
Typical over-the-top drama queen hysterics. These same 25 posters keep following me around! All these people reading and responding to my posts on a public bulletin board are following me!

Value or substance? From the Hollywood jockstrap sniffer and podcast worshipper

It's always hilarious when folks with no idea what the plaintiff's or defense's case presented were pop up after the fact with some grand theory or supposed fatal flaw.

Instead of being a colossal dick, why don't you explain to us what you think the points of this case are. From what I've read the woman is suing on the grounds that the cigarette companies don't disclose the addictive nature of their product and they don't fully disclose what carcinogens are in their products. Do you agree that anyone born in 1972 and started smoking in 1985 didn't realize smoking could cause lung cancer and wasn't aware that smoking cigarettes was addictive?

Yes, I "follow you around"...You aware how this site works, right?
Typical over-the-top drama queen hysterics. These same 25 posters keep following me around! All these people reading and responding to my posts on a public bulletin board are following me!

Value or substance? From the Hollywood jockstrap sniffer and podcast worshipper

I've been here, I'd say, a good while. And you get the honor of being the first to pull this lost puppy shit with me. I've had many a substantive row with posters on here, and we've went toe to toe and figuratively shook hands later. But none have made it their mission to post nothing save, 'here's that guy again, did you know I don't like him much' over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.

I've seen such obsession in other posters here in the past, just never directed at me. They all eventually flamed out and crashed hard, never to be heard of again, whether be going off the deep end themselves, or ousted by the mods for their bat shit antics. Sorry your jonze has you so firmly in its grip, hope you snap out of it before you find yourself staring blankly at your own reflection for hours, applying and re-applying lipstick in loopier and loopier swirls.

Just stay away IRL. You're uber creepy.

__________________
Horses must love being the go-to animal when discussing whether a man has a HUGE COCK!